January Jones

January Jones plays Betty Draper in Mad Men. Betty's immaculate appearance belongs to the same world of carefully maintained surfaces as Don's advertising work. Jones makes the domestic scenes uncomfortable in a different way from the office scenes: the silences are longer, and there is often no useful task for anyone to hide behind.

Her performance received Emmy and Golden Globe nominations. Betty can be proud, brittle and difficult company, but Jones also communicates the frustration of someone who has followed a set of instructions and found the promised life unsatisfying. The restraint is part of the performance, not an absence of feeling.

After Mad Men, Jones played Melissa Chartres in the comedy The Last Man on Earth. Her other television work includes The Politician and Spinning Out. On film, she is Emma Frost in X-Men: First Class and appears in Unknown, The Boat That Rocked and Good Kill.

Betty is a useful reminder of how much Mad Men depends on what happens away from Sterling Cooper. Jones makes that home life feel like a world with its own pressures, rather than somewhere Don visits between the more important scenes.